Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Guest Post: Win a Free Tesla while helping the Environment!

Tesla for a Cause: Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle

Abigail Benjamin

When I was growing up, summer was the crisp chill of air conditioner hitting me as I stumbled in from the muggy backyard. During the summer, we plan cookouts, international flights, and road trips. We try to forget that engaging in these summer luxuries packs our air, water, and soil with carbon emissions that intensify all future summers to come.

Can we be blamed? Using fossil fuels is easy and cheap. The dollar value of a full tank of gas does not reflect the nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted by burning a single gallon of gasoline. These emissions worsen climate change, devastating ecosystems and the economies and communities that our natural resources could otherwise support. These pollutants also have serious and costly direct health impacts. Even those of us with a strong environmental consciousness will find it difficult to know the environmental cost of every good we own or use, let alone entirely avoid or limit our use of those goods.

That's why businesses, legislators, and citizens around the world are calling for our governments to put a price on carbon pollution. By pricing carbon, we ensure that the societal and environmental costs of goods and services are considered in their production and consumption, incentivizing the transition to clean energy. Putting a price on carbon rebalances the way we think about and use emissions-producing goods, preventing us from unwillingly destroying our natural resources and polluting our shared land, air, and water.

Boston-based nonprofit Climate XChange sees carbon pricing as a critical next step in tackling the climate crisis. Transportation, a sector poised to undergo rapid transformation, produces over a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Carbon pricing would accelerate the transition to electric vehicles; as such, Climate XChange is holding a Carbon Pricing Awareness Tesla Raffle.

This July Fourth, Climate XChange will choose one grand prize Tesla Model S or X winner and five cash prize winners out of no more than 2500 tickets in an effort to raise awareness of and gather support for two carbon pricing bills that are currently in the Massachusetts state legislature. The bills are scheduled for a committee hearing on June 20th, and have garnered widespread support across the state.

Massachusetts has the opportunity to catalyze a major shift in our nation's economy and energy system. As federal oversight of the environment becomes less certain, it is our responsibility to take effective action on climate change. In order to do so, we need to show legislators our support for carbon pricing. To learn more about the raffle and support carbon pricing in Massachusetts, please visit carbonraffle.org.

Jose publish note: Putting a price on carbon, now that's something i would vote for...Wish you all the best!